THERE is nothing secular about foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. The dictionary defines secular as “not pertaining to or concerned with religion or religious body.” DMK patriarch Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s announcement on Tuesday that his party MPs would strongly oppose FDI in retail in the debate in Parliament but vote for it is like hunting with the hound and running with the hare, a tactic at which his party excels. The DMK opposes the contentious move to permit FDI in retail, he said; nevertheless he has decided to support the UPA government in Parliament on the issue solely to prevent “communal” forces from coming to power. Karunanidhi is too experienced a politician to know that there is no danger of the UPA government falling even if the FDI vote goes against it and there is no chance of the NDA forming a government as it simply does not have the numbers. The spectrum scam is the creation of the DMK’s own A Raja during his term as Telecom minister in the UPA government. After the demolition of Babari Masjid, only the DMK wooed the BJP when it saw that party’s stars on the ascendency, became a member of the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP and enjoyed the fruits of power from 1999 to 2004 without Karunanidhi’s conscience pricking him. Only when the DMK weather cock predicted that the NDA was unlikely to get another term, did he hitch his wagon to the Congress-led alliance.
The DMK’s decision, howsoever bitter it was, to vote in favour of FDI was influenced solely by extraneous considerations. With a hostile AIADMK government firmly entrenched in Fort St. George, Karunanidhi could ill afford to incur the wrath of the Congress. His daughter, Kanimozhi, is still not out of the woods in the 2G case. With the Congress showing signs of facilitating the 2G accused wriggle out of their predicament by putting up RP Singh, a former CAG official, to challenge the presumptive loss of Rs. 1.76 crore, the stage is set for watering down the charges against Raja and Kanimozhi. Karuninidhi simply seized the opportunity and offered to vote for FDI in Parliament much against his party’s stated objections to opening retail to foreign investors. He need not have invented spurious justification for his volte-face. To call the BJP communal and the Congress non-communal is a travesty of truth. The Congress was the first party to communalise politics in India. Never having won an Assembly election in Kerala, the Congress, even during Prime Minister Nehru’s time, entered into an electoral alliance with the Muslim League in 1960 to capture power in that southern State. But for this support, the League would not have risen its head in independent India after Partition. Having tasted power in Kerala with communal forces, the Congress went on to align with the Kerala Congress, a party of Christians, National Democratic Party of the Nair community and the Socialist Republican Party of the Ezhava community. No other party in India has contributed so much to communalising politics in the country as the Congress. Karunanidhi is old enough to know this, although he may argue he is senile enough to have forgotten.

The shortest route from anywhere to anywhere else in Indian politics is through Secularism Avenue – as DMK president M Karunanidhi demonstrated on Tuesday.

Your entire political career may have been driven by the most vile caste-based identity politics, you may have given moral legitimacy to political assassins, your party may be monumentally corrupt, your daughter may have served prison term (and still face trial) on corruption charges, and even though you are a wheelchair-bound geriatric, you may need to perform agile gymnastic contortions to explain your political flip-flops.

But in the end, there is one ‘brahmastra‘ that you can pull out to explain away your polygamous politics: you want to defend ‘secularism’, whatever that means.

Likewise for the Congress: it may have been caught with its hands in the till in the many corruption scandals that have come to define its term in office, the government it heads may have been reduced to a lame-duck, minority arrangement, it may have itself played the most perverse communal political games. But in the end, it can always count on its allies to bail it out by invoking the shibboleth of ‘secularism’.

In that sense, ‘secularism’ is an ‘invisibility cloak’ worthy of Harry Potter. When you have it on, you can do whatever you want, and your dirty deeds will have a ‘secular’ legitimacy.

On Tuesday, Karunanidhi played his ‘secular’ trump card yet again to explain his decision to support the UPA government (of which his party, the DMK, is a constituent. The DMK opposes the contentious move to permit FDI in multi-brand retail, he said, but even so, it had decided to support the UPA government in Parliament on the issue solely in order to prevent “communal” forces from coming to power.

“When this discussion comes up in Parliament, though there may be thousands of differences (between the UPA and the DMK on the issue), thinking about the unfavourable incidents that may emerge if this government falls at the Centre, it has been decided to support the UPA with bitterness,” Karunanidhi said in a statement.

If anything happened to the UPA government, he added, it would only benefit the BJP. “We have to think of mosque demolitions, kar sevas, anti-minority measures and similar other communal atrocities if the BJP or a communal government it supports assumes power at the Centre,” he added.

But beneath this seemingly high-minded charade, the reasons for Karunanidhi’s doing back-flips to explain his political fecklessnes – in opposing the proposal for FDI in retail and yet voting for it – aren’t hard to trace. His daughter Kanimozhi is still undergoing trial in the 2G scam cases, and to the extent that the Congress is still the puppet master that yanks the CBI’s strings, it still determines the DMK’s political destiny. The case against Kanimozhi,after all, will be only as good as the prosecution wants it to be.

Nor is Karunanidhi alone in invoking the ‘secularism’ card to bail out the Congress. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav too touted much the same reason when he stepped in after Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee withdrew support to the UPA government over the issue of FDI in retail and the diesel price hike.

Soon after Mamata Banerjee walked out, Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav (who is Mulayam Singh’s brother) noted that although the Congress was guilty of a number of governance failures, the Samajwadi Party would perhaps have to step up and prop it up in the interest of stopping the BJP.

“This government would have fallen long ago. Many parties share our view on it (corruption, price rise and unilateralism in alliance). But we cannot forget the Gujarat riots and how the state sponsored them. We have seen that face of the BJP. So, we have to think twice before taking a step lest it helps such forces in coming to power,” Yadav had said at that time.

But such specious reasoning notwithstanding, the Karunanidhi’s and the Samajwadi Party’s alibi for their stated intention to bail out the government merely reflects the debasement of political posturing in India, where anything – including monumental corruption, such as the UPA government has overseen in the past three years – can be defended in the name of upholding “secularism” as defined by opportunistic invocations of that slogan.

Like Karunanidhi, Mulayam Singh too is susceptible to political blackmail – to the extent that he too faces charges of having acquired assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. The Congress has the capacity to abuse its power and taint him – or allow him to walk free.

But the cynical politics of playing the ‘secularism’ card may be close to its sell-by date. The taint of being seen to be joined at the hip, in the way that the Congress and the DMK are (as coalition allies), will recoil on both of them – in the way that it did during the 2011 Assembly election in Tamil Nadu. Which is perhaps why neither of them can stand the stench emanating from the other, but gamely march, hand in hand, down Secularism Avenue – in the hope that their ‘invisibility cloak’ will mask their perverse politics. But when their magical cloak loses its invisibility powers, their naked politics will be on glorious display for the world to see.

Investigating officer said all accused have gone into hiding and evading arrest

The Melur Judicial Magistrate court on Monday issued non-bailable warrants, on a petition filed by the Madurai rural district police, against Durai alias Dayanithi Alagiri, son of Union Minister M. K. Alagiri, former director, and Nagaraj, partner, Olympus Granites, in the granite scam case.

Magistrate V. Jayakumar issued the order and similar NBWs against PRP Exports owner P.R. Palanichamy’s sons Suresh Kumar and Senthil Kumar; Palanichamy’s wife Selvi, son-in- law Maharajan, and relatives Deivendran and Murugesan, who are also accused in the multi-crore granite scam.

The petition filed by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Prohibition Enforcement Wing, the investigation officer, said all the accused had gone into hiding and were evading arrest. Arrest warrants were sought to proceed with the investigation process.

A counter petition filed by Mr. Dhayanithi on October 10, opposing the police plea, said the arrest warrant could not be issued by courts solely for production of accused before the police in aid of investigation. What could not be done directly could not be done indirectly through court, it said. It contended that he was being politically victimised as he was the son of a Union Minister and grandson of the DMK president M. Karunanidhi.

Arguing against the counter petition, Assistant Public Prosecutor S. Selvasundari, on October 12, said the petition seeking warrant had been filed only to press his appearance in court and not for investigation. She also refuted the allegation of infringement of fundamental rights.

On a complaint from the local Village Administrative Officer, police had charged Mr. Dayanithi and Mr. Nagarajan with encroaching on the adjacent government land and taking away large quantity of granite illegally, without quarrying in the permitted area and causing loss of Rs. 44 crore to the government.

Cases had been registered under various IPC sections, including 120B (criminal conspiracy), 447 (criminal trespass) and 420 (cheating) against them.

PRP Exports chairman P. R. Palanichamy was produced before the court on Monday as he was not able to appear on Friday.

The granite baron, who is lodged in Palayamkottai central prison, complained of ill health. The hearing was postponed to October 29.

Dealing yet another blow to the opposition DMK, the Tamil Nadu police on Saturday arrested senior DMK leader and former minister K Ponmudi on charges of illegal mining, a day after the court rejected his anticipatory bail plea.

He has been remanded till October 19 and was lodged at the Cuddalore central prison.

Ponmudi, who has been a minister in successive cabinets of party chief M Karunanidhi, and his son with a few others were charged of quarrying much more than the permitted amount of red sand, valued at nearly Rs 30 crore.

In a clear case of nepotism that the party is accused of promoting, the licence for mining was awarded in the name of his son, Gowthama Sigamani, Rajamahendran and Jayachandran when Ponmudi was the minister in charge of the Department of mines and minerals.

The complaint came from the tehsildar of Vanur accusing the group of over exploiting the resources from 2007 till now. It stated that while sand could be mined only 20 feet from the surface, the accused had mined it from as deep as 90 feet.